Sunday, 2 November 2014

I found this baby Calotes on coming back from work today. It was sitting on the path, and for a moment I thought it was a twig. I picked it up and put it to safety on a Canna leaf before taking these photos.

An amazing number of Indians are terrified of these harmless lizards, and a lot of them imagine it's a vampire which "sucks their blood"- because it's got a coloured dewlap (this one has one too, bright blue, which it displayed when I picked it up) and the floor of its mouth moves up and down as it breathes. Some morons even used to murder them on sight earlier. I haven't heard of anybody doing that in a long time, fortunately, but I have seen people refuse to walk along a path just because one was sitting on a wall on one side.

Ich’s parent had told him in no uncertain
terms not to go watch the flare, but of course he went.

All the other children went too, just as their
parents had gone when they were young and their
parents had told them not to go. Even the parents knew perfectly well
they’d go to watch; the warning was just a formality, as everyone knew well
enough.

For all that, though, Ich couldn’t just go in front of his parent without being
stopped, of course, and it wasn’t so easy to sneak off without being detected.
So, increasingly impatiently, he eddied back and forth, riding the plasma
waves, waiting for a chance.

It came at last, a vortex forming which
pushed him away from his parent long enough for him to move off, flowing along
the rivers of plasma. He spread himself as thin as he could, letting the
current take him along, its blazing energy flooding through his substance so
that he felt almost as though he were part of the river itself.

This was something he loved doing, and
nobody – not even his parent – had ever forbidden him. When he was spread thin
like this, he tasted the magnetic fluxes, felt himself ride on each little bump
and ripple of the flow, and felt himself flooded with the warmth from below, of
which he could never have quite enough. At times like this he felt as though he
was listening to music, a beat like a slow-throbbing heart and the high notes
of particles as they rustled and squeaked and flung themselves away forever.

Once or twice he’d spoken about this. The
first time he’d told his parent, who had listened almost sympathetically.

Ich
hadn’t replied, but had thought about it, and later told a few of his friends.

They’d all laughed at him. “Music in the
energy flows!” they’d scoffed. “Ich is crazy! He must have got too close to a
flare and it cooled him off.”

All this was terribly unfair, of course,
but Ich realised that it would be pointless to speak of it again until he was
old and large enough to be taken seriously. “Besides,” he’d muttered fiercely
to himself, “even if I am imagining
it, it’s beautiful and rare, and someday I’ll make music just like that and
everyone will listen.”

So as he floated along the plasma river
towards where the flare was building, he listened to the music even as the
light and warmth flooded his substance and the magnetic fields danced and
wavered around and through him, filling him with delight. Several times he
sensed other children around him, all headed in the same direction, but he
ignored them all, just as they ignored him. Everyone was eager to see the
flare, and nobody wanted to waste time talking.

Until, that is, the fringe of Ich’s
substance brushed that of Gorak’s. Gorak was one of the few others who had
never laughed at Ich when he’d talked about the music. She also, like him,
preferred to spread herself out almost to insubstantiality and ride the plasma
rivers rather than swim through them like titanic whales like almost everyone
did. Now she brushed his side with hers and sent her thoughts to him in a
stream of charged particles.

“So you managed to get away? I wasn’t sure
if you would.”

“Why not?” If any of the others had said
something similar, Ich would have become defensive. But Gorak had never been
anything but open with him. “I’m as eager to see the flare as anyone else.”

And they could, deep below, and still far
ahead, the surging forces building and building.

“We’ll be well in time,” Ich said. “And if
necessary we can always swim.”

The other children were all swimming, so
that by the time Ich and Gorak arrived, there was already a large crowd, and
they were right at the back. It wouldn’t matter, though, because the flare
would be more than big enough for everyone to see.

“Have you ever seen a flare before?” Gorak
asked Ich.

“Yes, once, but it was from a long way off
and my parent was with me.”

“And what did she say?”

“That the flare was very dangerous, and if
we got too close nobody would find us, ever again.”

“My parent said that the flares are
throwing all the poison in the plasma away, and that if you get too close
you’re thrown away with the poison.”

“But where would you throw it to?” Gorak
flung an energy pattern to indicate the glowing sky above them. “What’s there
to throw anything at?”

Ich was about to invent something to say
when another someone spoke from behind them.

“Excuse me, my friends.” It was a slightly
older voice, not one of the other children. “I couldn’t help overhearing. So
you’re interested in flares? I mean,” the stranger added hastily, “you’re
interested as more than mere spectators, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes,” Ich said uncertainly. “I’m not
sure who...”

“I’m Nebbi,” the stranger replied. “I’m a
trainee scientist, so I’m here, but...” Her voice was aggrieved. “I’ve been
asked to stay away and let the top people take their measurements and readings.
So I’m just hanging around. Anyway,” she repeated, “so you’re interested in
flares? But you don’t seem to know anything much about them.”

“So what are they?”Gorak asked.

“Before I answer that,” Nebbi said, “let me
ask you both a question. What do you know about our world?”

“And what is it?” Nebbi asked, and waited
expectantly. Neither of the children said anything.

“Oh well,” the trainee scientist continued
at last. “You see, all this we’re living on – it’s just the outer skin of a
ball of incandescent gas.”

Ich and Gorak expressed wordless surprise.

“Yes,” Nebbi said, warming to her theme.
“It’s a ball of gas, which consumes itself to provide heat and light and
magnetic energy and everything else that keeps us alive.”

“How can it be a ball of gas?” Gorak
protested. “Where would it stay?”

“It isn’t staying anywhere,” Nebbi said.
She extruded photon streams that painted a picture in their substances. “See
here, how it moves through an immense emptiness, in which there are many other
balls of gas like ours. We call them stars.”

“I don’t understand,” Gorak said. “How did
we come to live on a ball of gas?”

“We didn’t come to live on it.” Nebbi paused. “We – that means you and I as
well – are just accumulations of this gas which have developed consciousness.”

“But –“ Ich said. “But...”

“No,” Nebbi said. “I don’t know how we
developed it, or when. It’s not my branch of science, but if you want I’ll
introduce you to people who know about all that. Anyway, as I just told you,
the world is a star, and it’s moving through a void filled with other stars.”

“And those other stars have...people like
us on them?”

“Who knows?” Nebbi said. “Some of us think
that since we exist, all stars of
this type should have creatures like us living on them. Others say that it’s
such a fantastically small chance that we developed life and consciousness that
it’s unlikely in the extreme that it could have developed anywhere else. The
answer is that we simply don’t know.”

“And that’s all there is – this void, and
stars?” Ich asked.

“No,” Nebbi replied reluctantly. “There are
other things, small balls of much denser material, so dense that we can hardly
imagine it. But these aren’t important. Why, some of them are revolving around
this star right now, and have been
for ages, and yet they don’t affect us at all.”

“Maybe those dense balls have people on them?” Ich ventured. “Maybe they –“

Ich heaved a disappointed sigh of ion
streams. “Well, I was hoping,” he muttered.

But Gorak had been thinking of something
else. “You said that this ball of gas we’re living on...this star...it’s
consuming itself to give us heat and light. So when it’s all done consuming
itself, what happens?”

Nebbi was silent for a while. “When that
happens...” Then she interrupted herself with relief. “Here comes the flare
now,” she said. “Can you feel it?”

Of course the children could. The flare was
pushing up from below, an unstoppable force from the heart of the star, hurling
itself towards the incandescent sky. It rose, a ball of fire, breaking apart
the horizon, ripping it apart in a welter of flame and radiation. Now it was a
pillar, a spear, as though flung by an angry god.

Neither Ich nor Gorak could hear each other
in the torrent of noise that came from the assembled crowd. They could hardly
make out their own thoughts.

And still the flare rose, and rose. Now it
was a tree, an immense rippling trunk of light and fire, growing up from the
star. The top split away branches and twigs and tendrils, which arched out far
overhead, spreading out over the crowd and filling the spectrum with static. It
was white-hot in the centre, cooling off to yellow and a dull red at the
margins, and still it grew. Now the top could no longer even be seen, merging
into the blazing sky.

The flood of energies diminished slightly.
Ich became aware of an urgent message coming from Nebbi. “Get ready,” she was
saying. “Here it comes!”

“What?” Before he could say anything more,
he felt it, the shock wave of the colossal eruption, racing along the plasma.
It lifted him up, pushed him to one side, and his substance and Gorak’s almost
merged for a moment. The other children, their bodies still heavy and dense,
were thrown backwards and scattered, some of them emitting ion streams of
alarm. They were in no danger, of course, the shock wave bearing them away from
the flare. But the crowd was suddenly gone.

Only Nebbi remained with Ich and Gorak.
“That is the flare,” she said quietly. “It’s the substance of the star itself,
flung up and out into the void by magnetic forces. Do you understand now?”

Ich and Gorak said nothing. They watched
the flare as though mesmerised. It occupied a quarter of the horizon now, twisting
and turning, becoming ragged at the edges as it faded into the sky.

“I should be going soon,” Nebbi’s thought
touched them. “I’ll be expecting you two to contact me as soon as you decide
you want to know more.”

“How do you know we’ll want to know more?”
Ich asked.

“Of course you want to know more,” Nebbi
said. “You’ll be trainee scientists yourselves, I’ll bet anything you want on
that. You see,” she added gently, “I was just like you myself.”

For a long time after she had gone, Ich and
Gorak did not speak. It was the former
who broke the silence.

“Imagine,” he said, “if we could somehow
ride on top of a flare like that. We’d be able to float off into the void she
was talking about.”

“And then what? Can you imagine how
desperately cold it must be up there? We’d freeze in a moment.”

“We might be able to visit those other
places she was talking about – those balls of rock.” Ich paused uncertainly. “I
still wonder if there are people of some kind on them. Why not?”

“She said it was too cold.”

“She said! She doesn’t know. She just thinks it’s
too cold. Just imagine, there might be a Gorak and an Ich there, they’d look at
this star and say it’s too hot for anyone to live here. But we wouldn’t stop
existing just because of that, would we?”

“Cold...” Gorak hesitated. “Do you remember
when I asked about what happens when the star runs out of gas to consume? Nebbi
didn’t say anything.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know. Or maybe she
doesn’t want to say. It wouldn’t be for a good while, anyway. And maybe if we
become scientists we can find out more about it.”

“You’re right. Hey, Ich?”

“What?”

“What was that music thing you were talking
about once? Could you tell me about it again?”

“You’re not going to laugh at me, are you?”

“I’m not going to laugh at you, Ich. I’ll
never laugh at you for anything.”

“Well, if you spread yourself out very
thin, like me, and try to feel...”

Far away, white fading to red, twisting and
coiling, the flare was still rising.